How do you take down a dictator?

I just finished reading, and looking at, Jason Polan's Every Person in New York, with foreword by Kristen Wiig. She writes that Polan finds and captures the "spark" in ordinary people.  That's why I love this book and these drawings so much. It's why I love to look at people and how they push their hair back and dig in their pockets or their bags for their keys or their phones and laugh at their kids and prop their sunglasses on their heads and all of the other little and ordinary things that people do.  No two are ever alike.

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12YO: Is Lent almost over?

No, sadly, Lent is nowhere near almost over. But now, in an entirely predictable development, the long mild winter actually IS almost over, only to be replaced by a freezing cold early spring. As my 15YO says, What in the actual hell? We're expecting our first real snow of the season, on March bloody 14th. At Mass this morning, the priest reminded us that God has a sense of humor.  I don't think He's very funny just about now.

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I'm taking a break from the Cazalets to read a math-for-idiots gift book called Math Squared: 100 Concepts You Should Know.  I'd have made the subtitle 100 Concepts THAT You Should Know, but that's just me. I like the relative pronoun.

Home office and workshop of Ralph Baer, inventor
of "the Brown Box," very early home video game
system.  That's a Simon game on the bottom shelf. 

I have written before about my lack of aptitude for abstract concepts, including such ridiculous things as imaginary numbers (I read that chapter twice--still don't get it.)  I distinguish math from math, in that calculations are fairly simple for me, once I understand the concept behind them. It's the concept that eludes me. I suppose that this is connected in some way to my fearsome lack of aptitude for spatial relations and my hideously bad sense of direction.  But gaping knowledge holes bother me, and I try to fill them whenever I can, as best I can. And again, it's Lent--math is nothing if not penitential.

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Just in case, after my failure to grasp the idea of imaginary numbers, I needed another reason to feel inferior, I went (finally) to see "Hidden Figures." I feel insulted, as a graduate of public schools and a state university, that I had never heard of Katherine Johnson, Mary Jackson, and Dorothy Vaughan before this movie was released. The movie itself is wonderful--every performance is true and human, and the story and script and pacing are tremendous.  And now I know the difference between a parabolic and an elliptical orbit. That's information that might come in handy one day. Imaginary numbers, however, are still beyond me.  Frankly, I think some joker at MIT made them up.

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My sister-in-law and my three-year-old nephew were at my house when we arrived home from the movie. He's a very active little boy. He makes me fight him. Fists up, or sword lifted, or Nerf gun aimed, he yells "AUNT CLAIRE. LET'S FIGHT."

I mean, it's fine for now. My size advantage is significant, and his hand-eye coordination isn't fully mature, so I remain undefeated. I worry about the future, though. He's going to get older, and grow.  I'm going to get older, and shrink. It won't be long before I'll no longer be able to take him down with  physical strength and agility alone, and I'll have to resort to cunning and treachery. Fortunately, I'm not afraid to fight dirty. Scruples are for suckers.

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So three weeks later, I still hate my hair.  But I've learned the hard way (which is the way that I learn most things) that the solution to a bad haircut--particularly a too-short bad haircut--is not another haircut. So I wait.

Julia Child's kitchen, recreated at the Smithsonian's Museum
of American history. I like the paintings hanging right on
the cabinets.  Note the odd placement of the trash can.

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Speaking of ordinary life (see first paragraph. No, I don't blame you if you forgot already. This post has taken rather a circuitous route to its conclusion), enjoy these pictures of ordinary life lived by extraordinary people.  Julia Child's kitchen is very appealing to me. I love the color of the cabinets, and the pegboard walls are both pretty in themselves and very useful. What I like best is the imperfection and lack of concern for magazine layout aesthetic.  The trashcan is molded plastic (though maybe she'd have had stainless steel if it had been widely available) and the clock above the sink, which you cannot see in this shot, is shockingly ugly--white with birchwood trim. Very 1984.  Likewise Ralph Baer's home office, above.  I would love to own the green toolboxes with the tiny drawers, and it's clear that he arranged his personal items and mementos in a way that was visually pleasing to himself.  Some of those mementos are hideous, though, and the chair on which he sat is repaired with silver duct tape. People lived in these spaces.  They pushed their hair back and laughed at their friends or their children (Julia Child, famously, didn't have children; Ralph Baer did, I guess, because there are Father's Day cards propped on his shelves.)  Maybe every so often, they thought that they'd like a fancier space; or that they should paint, or organize, or buy a nicer trashcan or a new chair.  But most of the time, they were busy living and working and being themselves, and they didn't have time to worry about what their houses looked like. That's a good way to be.

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In my own dojo!

This title makes no sense, does it? I was sick in bed on Friday night, watching "Mean Girls," and I thought I'd use that line as a title, and then let the rest worry about itself.  But I'm going to leave it there. There might be need some day to take down a dictator, and it doesn't hurt to start thinking about it.  Meanwhile, I'm nothing if not oppressed, living under the regime of a three-year-old madman who makes me fight to the death in my own home.   As Bertie Wooster said, sometimes you need to let dictators know where they get off. Pugnacious toddlers: Beware. Sleep with one eye open.